Teamfight Tactics, the auto-chess game mode-offshoot of League of Legends has recently released its 9.22 patch. The update marks the end of the game’s beta and ushers in Season 2, called Rise of the Elements. At its core, the fundamentals of the game have not really changed. Players will still draft a team of champions, arranging them on a grid where they will automatically fight against another player’s team. What has changed is the Champions, Origins, Abilities, and Classes. So you know, minor stuff.
According to the Rise of the Elements announcement posted couple of weeks ago on the League of Legends website, the Champions will now possess Element and Class types that will work in combination with each other, giving bonuses. While the core is more or less the same, this does mean that players will need to chuck their old synergy strategies out the window and start anew. The new Elements will be Crystal, Desert, Electric, Glacial, Inferno, Light, Steel, Mountain, Ocean, Poison, Shadow, Wind, and Woodland. The Classes will be Alchemist, Assassin, Avatar, Blademaster, Summoner, Druid, Mage, Mystic, Predator, Ranger, and Warden. You can check out the full announcement to see where your favorite Champions fall within the new categories.
In addition to giving players a homework assignment learning all the new Champion types, Teamfight Tactics will be bringing just a few more (minor) changes to the game. The board size will be increased ever so slightly, going from 3×7 to 4×7 hexes. The Champion pool has also been reduced. The most impacted is Tier 1, dropping from 39 to 29 Champions available, but Tier 2, 3, and 4 have also seen slight reductions. “It will be much more difficult for multiple players to build similar teams,” reads the 9.22 Teamfight Tactics patch notes.
One final notable change is that Ranked play has been disabled for patch 9.22. Once it returns in patch 9.23, placing 4th or better will always award LP while placing 5th or below will never reward LP, and the number of challenger and grandmaster spots in certain regions will be scaled back due to concerns over the distribution of players.
You can check out the entire list of changes that are now live with patch 9.22 in the patch notes, as well as brush up on the new elemental changes on the League of Legends website.